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The Crucible's Legacy of Appropriation and Sexual Shame in Popular Culture

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The Crucible's Legacy of Appropriation and Sexual Shame in Popular Culture Illinois State University ISU ReD: Research and eData Theses and Dissertations 4-5-2021 Bewitching The Blame: The Crucible'S Legacy Of Appropriation And Sexual Shame In Popular Culture Hope Kristine Morris Illinois State University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/etd Part of the Theatre and Performance Studies Commons Recommended Citation Morris, Hope Kristine, "Bewitching The Blame: The Crucible'S Legacy Of Appropriation And Sexual Shame In Popular Culture" (2021). Theses and Dissertations. 1395. https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/etd/1395 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by ISU ReD: Research and eData. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ISU ReD: Research and eData. For more information, please contact [email protected]. BEWITCHING THE BLAME: THE CRUCIBLE ’S LEGACY OF APPROPRIATION AND SEXUAL SHAME IN POPULAR CULTURE HOPE MORRIS 61 Pages In The Crucible Arthur Miller uses tropes of female characters, Abigail and Tituba, to tell a story of male heroism. In the process, he dismisses and appropriates the true stories of women who suffered during the Salem witch trials for his own political and personal gain. In this thesis, I argue that Miller’s appropriation and sexualization of women continues into contemporary popular culture depictions of the Salem witch trials including the movie adaptation of The Crucible and the television shows Salem and American Horror Story: Coven . These depictions appropriate and sexualize women’s stories in order to fulfill the male gaze. This thesis also explores how three contemporary women playwrights are writing new plays that address the sexism of Arthur Miller, show how The Crucible perpetuates abuse, and encourage women to confront sexism by creating their own works about the Salem trials. These plays are Abigail by Sarah Tuft, John Proctor is the Villain by Kimberly Belflower, and Becky Nurse of Salem by Sarah Ruhl. Finally, I argue that in order to have a true feminist redemption of the Salem witch trials in popular culture, there must be more creative and scholarly analysis of Tituba, a woman of color who has been most silenced in these depictions. KEYWORDS: Abigail Williams, Arthur Miller, male gaze, Salem Witch Trials, The Crucible , Tituba BEWITCHING THE BLAME: THE CRUCIBLE ’S LEGACY OF APPROPRIATION AND SEXUAL SHAME IN POPULAR CULTURE HOPE MORRIS A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF SCIENCE School of Theatre and Dance ILLINOIS STATE UNIVERSITY 2021 © 2021 Hope Morris BEWITCHING THE BLAME: THE CRUCIBLE ’S LEGACY OF APPROPRIATION AND SEXUAL SHAME IN POPULAR CULTURE HOPE MORRIS COMMITTEE MEMBERS: Ann Haugo, Chair Kee-Yoon Nahm Kyle Ciani ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thank you to Dr. Ann Haugo, Dr. Kee-Yoon Nahm, and Dr. Kyle Ciani for their continued feedback and support. Thank you to Cheyenne Flores, Breeze Pollard, Hannah Sellmyer, Col Connelly, Ari Garcia, Kristi Morris, and anyone else who I have swindled into reading chapters and offering feedback. Thank you to Sarah Ruhl for allowing me to read and analyze Becky Nurse of Salem . Thank you to Molly Briggs-Yonke and Kelsey Fisher-Waits for helping me find the plays, Abigail and John Proctor is the Villain . Thank you to Aaron Manke who created the podcast, Unobscured , which first inspired my interest in the Salem witch trials. Thank you to everyone else who listened to me cry over this project, who listened to be ramble about the “a-ha!” moments, and who told me not to give up when I really thought I might. H.M. i CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS i CONTENTS ii INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER I: MILLER’S MISREPRESENTATIONS OF THE WOMEN OF THE 10 TRIALS CHAPTER II: BLAMING FEMALE SEXUALITY AND BLACK MAGIC 25 Blaming Female Sexuality 25 Blaming Black Magic 34 CHAPTER III: A FEMINIST RESPONSE 40 CONCLUSION 55 WORKS CITED 59 ii INTRODUCTION In colonial America, at least thirty-three people were executed for witchcraft. Twenty- five of these people died during the infamous witch trials of Salem, Massachusetts. To summarize the trials as explained by Salem scholar Mary Beth Norton in her book In the Devil’s Snare and Stacy Schiff in her book The Witches: Salem, 1692, in the cold winter of early 1692, the household of Reverend Parris of Salem village was disturbed by the strange behavior of his nine-year-old daughter, Betty, and his eleven-year-old niece, Abigail Williams. Another child, Ann Putnam, began to behave the same way. The girls appeared to be bewitched as they barked like dogs, flung themselves across rooms, and had seizure-like fits. Betty, Abigail, and Ann named their bewitchers: Tituba, an enslaved Indigenous woman of the Parris household, and two impoverished local women, Sarah Good and Sarah Osbourne. In response to the accusation, Tituba spun an elaborate confession where she spoke of the devil’s great force that caused her to bewitch the children. After some painful persuasion, she began to name other cohorts of the devil. Soon many women and girls (and some men) of Salem caught on and began to accuse their neighbors, enemies, and even their own families. Schiff explains the panic in these words: “The youngest of the witches was five, the eldest nearly eighty. A daughter accused her mother, who in turn accused her mother, who accused a neighbor and minister. A wife and daughter denounced their husband and father. Husbands implicated wives; nephews their aunts; sons-in- law their mothers-in-law; siblings each other. Only fathers and sons weathered the crisis unscathed” (4). There is speculation over what truly caused this witch craze. Was it the desire for property? Was it economic greed? Was it an attempt to rid Salem of its less desirable citizens? Scholars have dedicated entire books in an attempt to explain the hysteria of the trials. Schiff 1 presents a list of many common theories: “generational, sexual, economic, ecclesiastical, and class tensions; regional hostilities imported from England; food poisoning; a hothouse religion in a cold climate; teenage hysteria; fraud, taxes, conspiracy; political instability; trauma induced by Indian attacks; and to witchcraft itself, among the most reasonable theories” (4-5). Regardless of intention, Salem’s afflicted community members accused men, women, and children, both old and young of the devil’s work, leading to the execution of many. This tragedy not only devastated an entire community; the massacre of supposed witches (mostly women) contributed to the dominance of a religious patriarchy in early American law. Women could not read, practice medicine, run businesses, own land, be midwives, marry again, or even be poor without being accused of being under the devil’s influence. The social systems supported by the Puritanical accusations towards women still have effects today, as Kristin J. Sollee explains in her book Witches, Sluts, Feminists: Conjuring the Sex Positive . She quotes the Sabbat Cycle mission statement, saying, “Nearly four hundred years after the first execution of the American ‘witch,’ many in our nation still call for the establishment of an American theocracy and a return to the puritanical delusions of old (47).” The witch trials were a grave tragedy primarily against women, and the theocratic oppression that they established continues to affect the way women’s autonomy is revoked in contemporary America specifically through anti-abortion legislation, lack of representation in government, and refusal to believe women. The witch trials deserve to be and need to be remembered and represented. However, in popular culture today, many representations of the Salem witch trials are tempered through a misogynistic lens that perpetuates abuse of women. The most influential representation of the Salem witch trials in the 20th century is Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible which was written and first performed in 1953 during the Red 2 Scare in the United States. The play begins with Reverend Parris stumbling upon a group of young girls, including his daughter and niece, dancing in the woods (Miller 10). To protect herself, his niece, Abigail, accuses Tituba of bewitching them, crying, “She made me do it! She made Betty do it...She makes me drink blood!” (43). Tituba, in fear of her life, confesses to witchcraft: “No, no, don’t hang Tituba! I tell him I don’t desire to work for him, sir” (44). Soon Tituba and the young girls in the town begin to name witches. Abigail, who is “seventeen...a strikingly beautiful girl...with an endless capacity for dissembling” in Miller’s play, lusts after John Proctor, her previous employer (8-9). When he rejects her out of loyalty to his wife, Abigail names Goody Proctor in the courtroom as a witch. In an attempt to save his wife through confession of his sexual sins, John Proctor himself is convicted of witchcraft and hanged. This play creates fictional relationships in a historical setting. Yet The Crucible presents itself as a factual account of the events of Salem by using real names and details of the Salem witch trials. However, Miller’s interpretation strays far from the truth in many crucial ways. Miller admits in “A Note on the Historical Accuracy of this Play,” that the play is not entirely factual. He says, “This play is not history in the sense in which the word is used by the academic historian” (Miller 2). To him, history is found in the essence of the story as he perceives it, as I will discuss further in chapter one. This is because he is appropriating the story for his own political agenda. According to the book Communists, Cowboys, and Queers by David Savran, Miller wrote The Crucible as an allegorical comparison of the Salem witch trials and the era of McCarthyism in the mid-twentieth century.
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